“Did you?” the cop demands.
“No, no. She was going to go to this man.
”
“Would she already have told him about any of thisâabout you and her
?”
“She said she hadn'tâwouldn't. She said he could never know.”
“You believe her?”
“Yes. I do.” The judge is in an agony of fright and remorse.
“Do you know the guy's name? Where he is?
”
“
He works ⦠at the carnival.”
The cop looks up. “The carnival that's here now
?”
“
Yes. She was with him there yesterday. He's the one she had a restraining order against. Carly would know his name.”
The cop paces again. Stops. “All right. I'm going to need some help.
”
The judge grows attentive.
“That green car in the driveway. Hers
?”
The judge nods
.
“I'll take care oÆ it. You'll need to clean up here. Take the rosary oÆÆ and that damn costume. But don't touch her skin. Have you got some sheets? Better yet, a shower curtain. All right, get it. Let me make a call.”
And that's what happens. Duross is going to the carnival anyway, for his paid detail. He'll get someone to help, to drive Flora Nuñez's car over to Regatta Field. He'll drive in from behind the meadow and dispose of her body. Why not? Since he has duty there a little later anyway, it'll be a simple enough thing to dump the body, park her car near the carnival, get into Pepper's trailer, and plant some evidence there.
Pieces were coming together. The juror ballot card that I'd found in the statuette at Flora Nuñez's apartmentâhad
T
stood not for Troy but for Travani? Were the dates appointments she had with the judge, to satisfy
his kinky lusts? Set up by Carly Ouelletteâwho had first been a teacher and later procurer of her students? It would explain Lucy Colón's reluctance to speak with me; because perhaps she was one of the judge's women, too. Women from another country, who might have cause to fear the legal system and welcome a protector?
I puffed a shivery breath. It was one story. Another tale was more recent:
The judge and Carly Ouellette about to have tea, to discuss the crisis situation they find themselves in because of a nosy private investigatorâand someone unexpected comes. Loose threads to be snipped â¦
My cell phone chirped.
“Detective. You were quick.”
The voice wasn't quick, though; it was ponderous and low and deeply distorted.
I have heard many things in hell.
“So were you,” I managed.
“Not quick enough. You called nine-one-one from there.”
The voice was electronically altered, giving it the guttural sound that the voices of evil entities in scary movies have. You saw devices for sale in the security management catalogs that enabled you to do that. I couldn't listen to it and drive. I drew sharply to the curb. “Okay, Duross,” I said, taking a stab. “What do you want?”
There was a silence, and I was pretty sure I'd stabbed right, but the voice remained altered. “I want what you've got,” it said. “Whatever you found at the judge's house.”
And what you must not have found,
I thought. “What makes you think I got anything?”
“Better pray that you did, or you have nothing to trade.”
“Be specific.”
Laughter that might have come from hell itself. “She keeps crying for her Pop.”
I swallowed, wanting to loosen the Doric column my neck had become. I got enough breath into my throat to form words. “Nicole is with you?”
He gave an address. I scribbled it down on the only thing I had handy, the back of my new auto registration. “Forty minutes,” he said. “Walk through the gate alone. If I see anything I don't like ⦔
“Wait! Let meâ”
But the voice was gone, leaving only its echo in my head, like something pondering along the gloomy halls of a nightmare. I stared at the phone, willing it to ring again, to tell me what to do next. It didn't. So I fell back on what seemed logical. I called police headquarters. I asked for Paul Duross, but I was told he was off duty. For a moment I sat, feeling something moving in me, something dark like a fast-fading winter sky when it reminds you that death is waiting. I put down the phone. The woman setting up the Halloween display at the public library had spoken of breaching the barrier between the living and the dead. It was what I needed to do. I looked at the dashboard clockâI didn't have a lot of timeâthen raised the phone and made another call. It rang a long time before someone answered, coughing rust out, but at least it was a real voice. I steadied my own. “It's Rasmussen,” I said.
I hadn't wanted to carry the sawed-off in my trunk for fear of getting caught, and lately it seemed as though being stopped was a daily thing, but now I was ready to take the risk. I had time enough to go home, get the shotgun, and still make the meeting. But one other thing first.
In my mind I replayed the voice on my cell phoneâDuross's, I was convinced. It told me things: that he'd known I had been at Travani's house, that perhaps he'd come back and seen me. It told me that there was evidence, probably incriminating, or why risk going back? Most important, it told me that he had Nicole. He had no reason to kill her, but that didn't mean he wouldn't. He had to be feeling desperate right now. I needed to let him believe that I had found something before the cops came.
The video store was a little mom-and-pop operation on Westford Street. I asked the clerk, an Indian or Pakistani woman, if she had blank videocassettes. When she finally understood me, she said she didn't have any blanks. All right, I said, I wanted to buy one of her rentals.
“You don't have member card?”
“I want to
buy
one,” I said. I had my wallet out and drew out a twenty.
After I made her understand, she took the money and asked me what I wanted. I said it didn't matter. “Do you want Tom Cruise? He is very popular. Or Julia Roberts?”
As I hurried toward my car, a black SUV with a stainless steel push bar rolled up onto the curb, cutting me off and almost pinning me against the adjacent building. Louis Hackett got out of the passenger side. “I thought that was your heap,” he called. “Been looking for you.”
“I don't have time right now.”
“Wrong answer.”
“I hope not. It's the only one I have. I'm in a rush.”
“Yeah, to see me. I asked you nice, even warned you, but did you listen?”
The driver's door opened, and Squisher Spritzer climbed out and walked around the back of the Toyota. Hackett said, “You know, Rasmussen, maybe it isn't you, maybe you're just some dumb prick who wandered into the sound stage and ruined the whole shot, and the director's got to yell, âCut!' and waste a bunch of time getting everything set up again. Yeah, I really think that's what it isâyou're a fuckup.”
“Look, I'll meet with youâwe'll huddle, we'll hondle, whatever you wantâbut it's got to be later.”
He jabbed a finger into my chest. “You know, this is the kind of bullshit I hate.”
My face grew hot and there was a thumping throb in my head. I felt time slipping away from me.
“But it's like that day on the river,” he went on, “when the restaurant owner knew someone was skimming, only he didn't know who. Somebody's got to be an example.” He looked at Squisher and made a sideways motion with his head. “I'm gonna cruise around the block.”
I opened my mouth to speak, and Squisher punched me. It was a short, straight blow that hit my chest like a pickup truck. It emptied my lungs. I staggered a few steps back on the sidewalk, dropping the videotape. He locked his arms down against mine, pinning them to my sides. He head-butted me, which touched off a blitz of light. My legs went gimpy He let go and stepped back, probably to let me drop. I didn't. He saw the cassette lying there and stomped it with a snapping crunch, as if it were Julia Roberts's fine-chiseled bones breakingâand mine next. I submarined
a punch to his gut. It was like hitting a slab of butcher block. He knocked my next swing aside and hit me again. I got my hands up, but he chopped me in the throat. I gagged. He rammed me back across the sidewalk. My head and elbow cracked hard against the brick wall of a building.
Pain. I was treading in foggy water, trying to keep afloat. He was so close that his feet were bumping mine, like a clumsy dance partner's. I tried to raise an arm to push him back. My elbow felt like it had broken glass inside. He pressed nearer, squeezing with his thick arms. He was so close his face was a blur, pocked like a hazy moon. His cigar breath and cheap aftershave dizzied me. He could kill me. That quickly the thought came. There were no controls on the man; he would cripple me, or worse, as surely as he'd dropped a man into the Harlem River or mauled an opponent in the ring. Another moment and I'd have breathed my last. Already my vision was starting to speckle with light. I saw one chance to survive.
Bracing my shoulders on the wall, I jacked a knee up into his groin, hard as I could. His cheeks bulged bullfroglike and he gasped a chestful of breath into my face. I kneed him again. His eyes rolled and he shuffled back, a look of agony and surprise stamped on his face. He began to moan, as if the pain were starting to build. I'd have let it end thereâI wasn't out for torture, only survivalâbut I knew that if he came around, it was going to go worse for me. Pushing past the hot ache in my left elbow, I gripped his lapels, both hands clutching hard on the slick polyester fabric. I swung him around. I dropped my shoulder and drove him against the building. He hit it and bellowed like a bull. I pulled him toward me, more pain in my elbow He twisted in my grip as I started to slam him back. I missed the wall and we hit a plate glass window with a thump. A sign read MEMBERS ONLY: PLEASE SHOW ID. It was a health and fitness club, I saw. Beyond the reflection on the window, several women had quit whirling away on Exercycles and gaped out at us. Squisher reached for me, and I drove him back one more time. He went through the glass like a dump truck. There were screams. I reached in with my good arm and hauled Spritzer out. His coat was shredded, and there were speckles of blood staining the fabric.
My breath heaving, I eased him down on the sidewalk. “Can't you read? Members only.”
Grady Stinson was on the sidewalk under the burgundy awning of the Ritz Manor, pacing, when I stood on the brakes. He pitched his cigarette into the gutter and climbed in, and I was rolling again before he had the door closed.
“You said ten minutes.”
“I hit a snag. I'm here now.”
He didn't bother with the seat belt; his generation of cops never had. His outfit was black chinos and windbreaker. I didn't ask if he was carrying a card with the image of a chess knight on it. I did wonder if he had a gun under there somewhere. He exhaled a strong peppermint smell that could have been mouthwash or schnapps, but I reserved judgment. He seemed sober, and that was all I could ask for.
“That from the snag you hit?”
I saw that my right hand, gripping the wheel, had several patches of blood congealing on the knuckles. “Yeah,” I said and left it at that. They were just abrasions, but my left elbow was another story. It felt like something inside was on fire. Maybe, I hoped, we'd get this next bit over with quickly and I could get myself some rest. For now, I kept my eyes open
for pedestrians as I zigzagged through the crisscrossing streets, heading north toward the river.
On the phone I'd told Stinson I was going to meet someone and wondered would he come along for the ride. He didn't ask a lot of questions, not even inquiring what he'd be paid, or if he'd be paid at all. He seemed happy just to be asked. My plan had been to have him at the wheelâhe was good at thatâbut time was too short to switch. He said, “Where's the meet?”
“Not far. The address is there on the dashboard.”
He looked at what I'd scrawled on the back of my registration, then at me. “This a joke?”
I glanced over. “It better not be.”
“This address is bogus. I pulled patrols in this area.” He flicked the registration with the backs of his fingers. “This is Nagasaki after the fireworks. It's Watts once the natives finished demoing it after the Rodney King verdict. Getting it?”
I wasn't.
“This is Dresden after the weenie roast. This address is desolation row.”
But he didn't need to press the point. The long bulk of the Wannalancit mill, rehabbed and fitted to modern purposes, came into view, and I realized that I'd gotten the address right but had confused its location in my mind. The meeting spot was one street (and about fifty years) beyond what I'd imagined, and now I saw that Stinson's mental map was better than mine. The old Boston Hosiery building came into view, its tower rising from the five-story brick shell, bearded with ivy windows blackened with time, and beyond it, hidden still, but there, was the one place in the city that I avoided the way Superman avoided Kryptonite.
A shiver clenched my shoulders and ran down my spine. Could Duross have known about that night? It was well before his time, and yet his uncle, Frank Droney, had been the one who'd made sure that my cop career was over. No, I couldn't buy that Duross knew that. It was coincidence. I refocused.
I slowed and drew into a vacant lot at an angle to the front of Boston Hosiery and facing it, 150 yards away. It seemed right: not obvious, commanding
a view of the entrance. I shut off the engine. Stinson looked over.
“Okay, I want you to wait here and watch that gate.”
“Sit and watch,” he repeated, sifting it for deeper meaning.
“And one other thing.”
I had to allow for the possibility that Duross was here ahead of meâhe had obviously phoned from someplace nearbyâbut I didn't think he was. His call had made clear that he felt vulnerable, given that he believed Travani had files that he thought, rightly or wrongly, could expose him. Duross's goal would be survival. I found myself remembering Ed St. Onge's remark about my standing alone. Strictly speaking, I was a loose end. But among dogs you had to be too big to eat; or at least make them think you were. Power isn't only what you have but what your enemy thinks you have. What I had was Duross's belief that there was incriminating evidence, and that I possessed it. Nicole had no intrinsic value to him; she was simply his lever. He'd be sharp enough to see that there wasn't any reason to harm her, wouldn't he? I didn't pursue the logic of whether he'd feel the same about me.
“I'm going inside, into the courtyard,” I said. “When the person I'm expecting shows up, let him get through the gate and then honk the horn.” I gave a demonstration, which echoed forlornly off the vast brick relics beyond us. “One honk. And be ready to wheel if I signal you.”
“This person you're expectingâa cop?”
I nodded. “Duross.”
He blinked, taking this in. “You're heeled, right?”
“No.”
Stinson screwed his face into something between a grimace and grin. “Shit, you always this well prepared?” He unzipped his coat, exposing what I realized was a shoulder rig and the checkered walnut grips of a handgun. He gripped it. It took a while to clear the holster. In a crisis situation, he could probably have hauled it out in time for the ME to arrive and pronounce him DOA. It was a Ruger Blackhawk, with a barrel about a foot long.
“What did you do, tell them to super-size it?”
“Forty-four Mag. Makes a statement, don't you think?”
“So does walking around naked.”
“If all I'm supposed to do is sit here with my face hanging out, you should take it.”
I was wrestling suddenly with my doubts about having dragged him along. Sure, he was a consenting adult, with his own badass fantasies, but this had nothing to do with him. Never mind that it would be impossible for me to conceal his cannon. Frankly, though I didn't tell him, I doubted I could hold it. My fingers were stiffening and my elbow felt hot and waxy, as if the joint were melting away. Besides, I rationalized, if things got tense, Stinson was the type to start throwing lead, and I had to think about Nicole. To his good, though, I remembered something about him that I had forgotten. Whereas a lot of cops hated having to wear a gun, couldn't hit a barn door with one, and hoped they never had to, Stinson had loved carrying, had love lighting it up when the situation warranted, or not. He went to the range on his own time and practiced. So, okay, maybe the risk/reward factor ran about even; but right now I needed him to stay put. “Hang on to your testosterone and sit tight.”
With sweat oozing under my shirt, I left the keys in the ignition and got out. “Remember, when he goes through that entrance, honk.” I started across the rutted vacant lot toward the empty street and the old mill.